on 110 account to touch it, until we were certain in which direction the head was, hut he disregarded my advice, and

liira

that the snake was progressing head foremost, it partly out. He was mistaken, the brute was moving backwards in order to extricate his head, and the poor fellow had caught it about 4 inches from the head. It instantly bit him, but he dragged his hand away quickly,

making

sure

seized it and

dragged

leaving the snake hanging half way over the wall, hissing and striking in a most furious manner. I immediately seized the man's hand, which was bleeding considerably, and wiped away with my fingers a quantity of the amber-coloured poison that was lying on his hand. I ran at once to the house, and

the first caustic I came across was nitric acid, with which in less than a minute I returned. The snake-man had again seized hold of the snake, this time by the tail, and was repeating his muntras; but he exhibited no signs of fear. After excising a large piece of flesh, I applied the strong nitric acid with the stopper of the bottle, and

although the agony

must have been intense, he neither winced, did he loose his hold on the snake. I then applied a ligature as tightly as possible around the forearm. The snakeman now dragged the brute forcibly out of its hiding place. It proved to be a large gokurrah khurish, (spectacled cobra), nor

and its

belly was greatly distended in three different places by food that it had recently taken. It was secured in a basket. Ten ounces of brandy were given to the man, and his hand was kept constantly in hot water. The hand became in-

some

swollen and painful, and was still so when I visited him morning of the 9th. There were, however, no constitutional symptoms of poisoning. On lifting up the basket containing the snake, I felt and

tensely on

the

heard

something rolling about inside, and on removing the lid, guinea fowl's eggs which the brute had disgorged. These eggs, which are in my possession, exhibit various stages of digestion. On searching the jungle near the servant's house, 4 more guinea fowl's eggs were found. This snake killed a fowl in 4? minutes. found three of my

CASE OF COBRA BITE.

^

By Y. Richards,

Civil

Surgeon,

Bancoorah.

Had I been less of a Pyrrhonist in regard to antidotes of snake poison, I might have been induced to expatiate on the infallibility of the treatment adopted in this case; but I am inclined to

believe, notwithstanding

the

wound,

the

bleeding

and the intense swelling, that the bite was an imperfect one, and that any other treatment, and indeed no treatment, would have been equally successful. The case, however, is extremely

interesting, "

more

particularly

on

account of its

demonstrating

remedies" gain a reputation entirely undeserved. I may state that I have noticed throughout my experiments, that much bleeding is a favourable circumstance, probably owing to the consequent dilution and expulsion of some how

of the

infallible

poison.

On the 7th of June, at about noon, I was informed by one of my servants that there was a large cobra curled up on the kutcha wall inside his house. I went, accompanied by my snake-man, to the servant's house, and saw lodged on the wall, between it and tke tkatcking, a cobra. All that was visible about 3 inches of its centre looped over a piece of wood. The snake-man gently probed it with a small twig, when it began to glide slowly over the piece of wood. T cautioned was